‘Every Day’ shows a love that leaves traces

Sunday, February 25, 2018

“Always the same age, but never in the same body twice.”

Fans of David Levithan’s bestselling novel “Every Day” have waited too long to hear this line through booming cinema speakers, and now they can indulge themselves in an adaptation that shows enduring excitement in a story of true love and identity.

The story introduces a 16-year-old mysterious soul that wakes up every day in a new body. A, as it has named oneself, gets to know each one of the people he inhibits on a level that nobody else could. A gets more access to their memories and thoughts the longer the bodies are inhibited—but the thing is, A only gets to stay for 24 hours in their lives.

A tries to live a normal day for each person, until he takes over Justin’s (Justice Smith) body and falls for his taken-for-granted girlfriend Rhiannon (Angourie Rice). And every day since, A has been in love with the same girl.

The film, like the novel, did not try to resolve nor scrutinize A’s complexity of existence, and it didn’t have to do so. “Every Day” was a film capable of celebrating the contemporary acceptance of what identity is, instead of dictating what it should be, by stripping off the very basic considerations of what a person is and how a person loves.

But the film is also overly cautious. While it aims to portray the unconventional aspects that Levithan’s work has triumphed, it also focused too much on what was convenient to show in a PG-rated movie.

This is where the great injustice to Rhiannon and A’s unrequited love story unfolds. While Michael Sucsy’s “Every Day” remarkably breathed life to the different characters and personalities A inhibited, there is conscious dilation or omission of the book’s nods to queer romance, effectively losing the narrative’s most important theme—that love is unconditional as much as it is universal.

However, Sucsy’s adaptation also manages to shift the focus on the importance of family, taking its time to explore this aspect. It introduces, in detail, Rhiannon’s family dynamic, as well as those of the people A was able to possess. It threads on the importance of family as much as its dysfunctionality, stretching how the story is able to resonate with its viewers.

Whether it is on printed pages or the big screen, “Every Day” raises the importance of recognizing and establishing one’s identity, and the film is able to show that it is one journey you and its lead, A, is on board together.